“There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.” -Alfred Hitchcock
In a nutshell, he gave the audience information of danger that the protagonist did not have, he would show the viewer what might happen. But there was a lot more to it than that Hitchcock often made use of subjectivity for a lot of voyeuristic purposes. Hitchcock’s characters had the uncanny ability to mimic the movie audience by a basic instinct to ogle an unassuming subject. But this technique is not one of Hitchcock’s creations and in fact named Lev Kuleshov as his inspiration. This technique is known as “The Kuleshov Effect.” Apparently, the basis of suspense always revolves around the fact that the film audience is constantly anticipating what can happen next in a given narrative situation and can manipulate the spectators in such a way as to generate suspense. When the audience is repeatedly reminded of the possibility of an event, this fact allows the building of suspense and more importantly the maintenance of tension throughout the narrative so that the identification of the audience with a relevant story does not decrease.
Subjectivity
By rhythmically repeating this technique, Hitchcock was able to cultivate suspense in a lot of his movies. He periodically switched from the ogler to the ogled which led to building the action. What resulted from this was a feeling and anticipation of utter helplessness as you watch the character observe a dangerous situation unfold and you see he or she proved incapable of preventing the spectacle.
In the movie Rear Window, Hitchcock can build the suspense the audience feels by building the one felt by the character. This way the audience feels like they are one with the character or are sharing something personal and intimate together.
Hitchcock believed that information and suspense went hand in hand, he believed in showing the audience what the character was unaware of. If something was going to harm your character in the future, show it at the beginning scene.
Using information to create suspense
Then you let the scene play like there’s nothing wrong. From time to time, remind the audience of the looming danger. This way you continuously build up the suspense level. Remember, the character is unaware of the coming danger. One method Hitchcock used in increasing the suspense level was by having the camera playfully roam around looking for something or someone suspicious. This way, the audience not only feels like they’re involved in solving the mystery, but they also feel like they’re one step ahead of the character.
His use of montage
Another method Hitchcock applied was in dividing action into a series of close-ups that were then shown in succession. This is a basic technique in cinematography. However, you should not make the mistake of thinking it is the same as throwing random shots together as you would see in a fight sequence.
This is a more subtle approach. First, Alfred Hitchcock starts with a close-up of a hand, then an arm, then you’ll see a face, followed by a gun falling to the floor, all of which are tied together to tell a story. This allowed him to portray an event by showing different pieces of it and gaining control over the timing. You can also use this method to hide parts of an event from the audience so that their mind is engaged.
A simple story
The confusing and overly complex story requires the audience to memorize quite a bit. It’s hard to squeeze out suspense from stories like that. The key to Hitchcock’s raw energy in his movies is the simplistic linear stories he adopts.
They are usually easy for the audience to follow and grasp. Your screenplay should be streamlined, so it offers the highest dramatic impact. Abstract stories tend to bore audiences. This is why Hitchcock mostly used crime stories that were filled with a lot of spies, assassinations, and people constantly running from the police. Plots like these aren’t necessary for all movies, but they are the easiest to play on fear.
No clichés
Clichés are boring and easy to predict. When you create suspense the best characters are those with hard to predict personalities, make decisions on a whim instead of what is expected from the previous buildup. Audiences tend to find such characters much more realistic which makes it easier for something to happen to them.
Many of you might have heard of the term “MacGuffin” floating out there in the ether, but what the is it? The answer is not that straightforward. Legendary director Alfred Hitchcock coined the phrase back in the days of his film 39 Steps and used it throughout his career.When asked what a MacGuffin was Hitchcock told this story:
A man asks, “Well, what is a MacGuffin?” You say, “It’s an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish highlands.” Man says, “But there are no lions in the Scottish highlands.” Then you say, “Then that’s no MacGuffin.”
In fiction, a MacGuffin (sometimes McGuffin or maguffin) is a plot device in the form of some goal, desired object, or another motivator that the protagonist pursues, often with little or no narrative explanation. The specific nature of a McGuffin is typically unimportant to the overall plot. The most common type of McGuffin is a person, place, or thing (such as money or an object of value). Other more abstract types include victory, glory, survival, power, love, or some unexplained driving force.
Editing
Hitchcock’s weapon of choice is editing. He intercuts shots of an unaware character with shots of the element of danger. For instance, in “The Birds’ (1963), when Melanie Daniels is riding a motorboat to the bay, she is attacked by a bird. It is a quick shot and we see a drop of blood. With the bird established as the threat, he can go on to create tension in a later scene where Melanie is sitting in a park, smoking a cigarette. Shots of her calmly smoking are intercut with shots of birds crowding on to a jungle gym behind her, one by one. Her shots are longer and those of the birds are quicker, lasting only a few second each. The final shot of her relaxed face lasts almost 30 seconds before she looks up to see a bird. And then when the film cuts to the jungle gym, it is crawling with tens of black birds perched on the bars. It is quietly terrifying. Moreover, we can hear children in a nearby school singing an eerie, monotonous song throughout the scene.
Tracking Shots
Camera movement can provide a much-needed layer of visual storytelling to a scene, but Hitchcock takes this a step further, using camera movement to lull the audience in. In many of his murderous scenes, Hitchcock starts by moving the camera with the subject throughout the space. As Detective Milton Arbogast (Martin Balsam) in Psycho walks up the stairs of the Bates’ house, the camera moves up the stairs with him. The audience knows that Mrs. Bates is somewhere in the house, and the camera opens up the space behind Arbogast, filling us with terror as we try to anticipate what direction Mrs. Bates will emerge from. After Arbogast is attacked, he falls down the stairs and the camera follows him, bookending the scene with the two tracking shots.
Another example of this is in the final scene in Vertigo. As Scottie (James Stewart) and Judy (Kim Novak) climb the tower, a dolly zoom (or the Vertigo zoom) takes us to the top. We are following the action while also becoming disoriented in the space. This mimics how both of the characters feel as the suspense of the scene heightens. The camera movement intentionally disarms the audience as we assume it is just a simple shot of someone in motion. On a closer look, the camera works subconsciously, manipulating space to reflect the state of mind the character is entering. When the character is firmly in a specific state of mind, Hitchcock’s genius locks in with a static camera.
Static Camera
While a camera in motion can feel naturalist and familiar, the static camera creates an eerie language that forces us to watch what is unfolding on screen, after Hitchcock lulls his audience into a false place of familiarity.
In The Birds, the camera stops tracking Melanie (Tippi Hedren) as sits down near a playground. The camera remains static as it watches her, cutting to the playground behind her that is slowly being taken over by birds. As more and more birds appear in each shot, the audience begins to fear for the unaware Melanie, becoming desperate for her to simply turn around. The lack of movement mimics one of the ways we respond to a threat: freezing. Hitchcock has complete control over how we interact with a scene, and he forces the audience to watch the tension building while knowing there is nothing they can do about it. The audience cannot flee or fight. Instead, they must wait for something to happen.
Hitchcock was hyper-aware that he had control over how the audience watched a scene. The suspense is built by his refusal to let the audience look away from what could happen. That is why the audience is relieved when Melanie looks back and sees all of the birds because we no longer have to anticipate what will happen.
Hollywood film coverage
Coverage hasn’t changed much throughout the history of cinema. Classic Hollywood coverage often starts with a long shot that goes to a medium shot, then a close-up, and ends with a long shot. You can find this style of coverage in most films because it works. Why change something that works?
Well, Hitchcock does classic coverage with a twist. The twist comes with the final long shot which is often positioned from a high angle. The camera, sometimes moving away from its subject, puts the audience at arm's length from the subject to show the character's emotions or state of mind in the scene. The effect can be used as a release from the suspense, but Hitchcock also uses it to build tension in the space, manipulating a character's size in the space, often making them look small and insignificant
The Mis en Scene
The way that things like the set were set up also created suspense. For example, the way that Hitchcock chose to have the Bates’ residence over looking the motel, eliciting an ominous feeling. In addition, the house is just downright creepy with a (supposed) human silhouette standing by the window, where one could assume nothing good is happening inside. also particularly enjoyed the way Hitchcock situated the Mis en Scene so that the audience did not know that Norman was the one committing the murders, dressed as his mother. For example, the above shower curtain blocking the view of Norman. Psycho only proved more to me Hitchcock’s abilities to create horror and suspense not only through his storylines, but also through the way he shot most of his films, and how he directed them.
Let the audience’s imagination create the shock and horror
The human imagination is a funny little thing. It can take information, and create something far more terrifying than what is happening on screen. This is why so many movie monsters are hidden in the shadows until the end of the film. Keeping the creature out of frame builds a specific type of fear that is unattainable if the creature is shown.
Certain elements in storytelling can transfer into the mind of the audience, forcing them to participate in the film. Many films treat the audience as a spectator, but doing this will eliminate any chance of suspensefully engaging with the audience. Be subtle and picky about what the audience does and doesn’t see in the frame, and let their minds do the work for you. These three lessons in suspense from Hitchcock will help you hone your ability to create genuine suspense in your screenplay. Don’t be afraid to play with audience expectations when you deliver specific information in a scene, but make sure that the information being presented has weight in the overall story.
The “bomb under the table” analogy
Hitchcock believed that a simple scene about four people sitting around a table, talking about anything until a bomb went off unexpectedly creates ten seconds of shock. What if that same scene took place but the people around the table knew that there was a bomb under the table the entire time?
The emotional response of the audience will be different because you’ve given them a little bit more information about the scene. When the audience knows something that the characters don’t know, that otherwise mundane sequence of dialogue becomes much more enthralling because the audience knows what is going to happen.
Suspense forces the audience to engage with the story. The audience wants the people at the table to stop talking about their meaningless topic of conversation and see that there is a bomb about to blow them to smithereens. If you want to be particularly cruel to your audience, then that bomb under the table shouldn’t go off. You’ve suspended the audience in suspense and they are waiting for the explosion, but nothing happens. This will send the audience into a frenzy because they were denied proper relief. It doesn’t matter if the bomb goes off or not, but you’ve given the audience the information needed to keep them on the edge of their seats. Just because they’ve pieced a story together with the information presented doesn’t mean that you have to follow the story.
Limiting information
Rear Window is full of suspense and it definitely doesn’t disappoint. There are many effects that Hitchcock has used but there are a few that stand out more than the rest.
One of these effects would be when Lars Thorwald is removing items from his apartment in a large case in the early hours of the morning. Soon after he returns then leaves again with the case. We know that Thorwald is acting suspicious but and we want to know why. Hitchcock has purposely limited our information by confining our point of view to that of Jeff. Hitchcock has drawn us into to participating through intellectual participation. This builds the suspense and engages us more in the film and particularly what Thorwald is doing.
In a different scene, Hitchcock uses parallel editing to build suspense. Lisa is rummaging through Thorwald’s apartment trying to search for clues. In this scene we have two views from Jeff’s point of view. One of these is Lisa searching the apartment and another of the hallway leading to Thorwald’s apartment. Thorwald had previously left the apartment after Jeff making a fake phone call to Thorwald telling him to meet him in a restaurant. After he leaves, Lisa enters his apartment via the window and after looking for a few minutes, she finds Mrs Thorwald’s wedding ring. As we see this, we also see Thorwald coming up the hallway towards his apartment and we know that neither one knows the other is on the opposite side of the door. This captures the perfect parallel editing while building up suspense. We are helpless as an audience to helping her and so is Jeff because of his broken leg but luckily Jeff has called the police and they arrive just in time.
In another scene Jeff is waiting in his apartment as Thorwald attempts to enter. The suspense was built up very effectively by using cross cutting. The way the camera cuts back and forth between Thorwald who is slowly getting closer to Jefferies while Jefferies is frantically trying to reload more camera flashes to blind Thorwald is incredibly effective when trying to build suspense. Not only does the camera cut back and forth but also the actions of the individuals in the shot build’s up suspense even more. Cross cutting is a brilliant way to build suspense and Alfred Hitchcock does it with excellent precision. In this scene as well, Hitchcock uses sound to build up suspense. After the police leave with Lisa, Jeff loses sight of Thorwald. This happens after he realises that Jeff has been spying on him. At this point he does not know Thorwald is or what he’s doing and then suddenly Jeff’s phone rings. He answers and there is no sound on the end of the phone and the absence of sound builds up even more suspense. Soon after we hear the loud footsteps of someone, most certainly Thorwald. Next, we hear the sound of someone attempting to open the door.
As can be seen by these examples given, Hitchcock lives up to his nickname “The Master of suspense”. He shows this by the cinematic techniques he uses.in his shots. He uses the point of view of one of the characters to limit our information, parallel editing, cross cutting and sound all to create suspense.
Patterns of Suspense; Suspense as a Narrative Process
Another device Hitchcock uses is patterns of suspense, used the whole way through his narratives, through the juxtaposition of local suspense with a global suspense. This technique involves adding strands of suspense throughout a narrative, within the overall suspense pattern of a film, Hitchcock devises clearly identifiable phases of suspense, nodes of localized suspense. It is the transition from these back to the main line of suspense that both involves, and shifts the audience. Hitchcock varies the patterns used- creating a different tension in audiences each time. Timing plays a lot of importance in this– in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1965), “Hitchcock has realized that suspense cannot be produced in an instant, but must be built up carefully. We are ensnared gradually via curiosity, suspicion, apprehension and worry.” (Hitchcock; Suspense, Humour and Tone; p.26) I found a few other examples of how he creates suspense.
Rear Window is a prime example of how Hitchcock works with cumulative, multi-levelled suspense. This is the pitting of one suspense situation against another – the effect can be “…to complicate the notion of suspense as a method for obtaining audience involvement by constructing a rather bifurcatory centrifugal trajectory into, and viewpoint upon, the narrative worlds.” (p31) The ‘Miss Lonelyhearts” storyline in ‘Rear Window’ starts out as self-contained unit in the narrative whole. As the main line of suspense builds (that regarding Thorwald murdering his wife), her storyline becomes a source of distraction for both the film’s characters and the audience. In the film’s final sequence it is Jeffries’ phoning of the police for Miss Lonelyhearts suicide attempt that endangers Lisa as he misses seeing Thorwald return to the apartment.
This local suspense competes with the main suspense by literally delaying the progression of that main narrative line – increasing the audience’s tension at seeing it resolved. By slowing action down almost to a stopping point, Hitchcock draws our attention to the “…waiting , delaying tactic on which all suspense depends….and consequently realize suspense’s potential ability to produce narrative stasis if the flow of information and the trajectory towards resolution are thwarted to an abnormal degree.”
We see a similar device in ‘Psycho’ – where Hitchcock pulls the viewer away from the film’s true dramatic centre. He uses the film’s opening moments to establish a ‘red herring’ storyline, where the localized storyline of Marion stealing the money is falsely set up as the main suspense storyline. This is reinforced by the opening title sequence and first moments of the film – which also set up a ‘false’ sense of dread (echoed again when Marion is in the car) – which quickly dissipates. “The film therefore mixes up and reworks the various stages of suspense in a way that is much more disruptive and unsettling than a gradual, predictable build-up of tension.” The effect of starting the film with this heightened, almost hysterical tone is that we can never really return to a baseline of normal tone – after the film’s true horrors start to occur. By starting at an advanced stage of suspense, the film has nowhere to go but beyond suspense to even deeper fear and horror. Hitchcock maintains fine control – the fact that these ensuing moments of horror are intrusive and quick only contributes to audience anxiety by denying us the chance to absorb the shock. The overall effect of Hitchcock’s patterning of suspense storylines in “Pyscho” is to create a powerful tension that never really gets resolved.
Suspense and Point of View
Hitchcock uses a technique through the identification of the audiences and their viewpoint- getting them involved in the scene itself. The protagonists viewpoint is one that most audiences strive to be part of- Hitchcock uses this to undermine the spectators stability and therefore evoke responses to narrative.
An example of this, is shown in Rear Window (1954). The viewer’s perspective is linked completely to the perspective of the protagonist who is the ultimate spectator, a wheelchair bound photographer spying out of his window. Hitchcock is making our identification with the hero absolutely self-conscious – drawing attention to a cinematic narrative device that is usually functioning invisibly. The result is a constant tension between what we see and what is actually occurring, “Jeffries functions as author as well as spectator, piecing together (and possibly inventing) the story of the murder.”
As the hero of Rear Window is ultimately a good guy, this device this is less subversive than it is in a film like Vertigo, where we are being asked to share the perspective of a less stable and attractive character. As in Rear Window, where Hitchcock played with the frame of perspective by constricted Jeffries (and therefore the audience’s) point of view by having the hero physically removed from the action – in Vertigo Hitchcock links us to a protagonist who own vision is impaired by severe bouts of vertigo. As the film progresses the protagonist’s perspective is even further befogged, and his point of view is so severely undermined that the mistaken identities of victim and victimizer lead to the film’s climax.
Feet = safety, dramatic introduction to a character, personality differences, lack of safety, sense of place
Hands = anxiety and shock, interact with objects, objects are evidence of a crime, uneasiness
Eyes = shows thought process, the mind at work, show what they are looking at
Watch the listening
Proximity to the actors faces
Close up - nervousness or suspicion
Behind shot - denial
Side - guilt
Wide shot - emotional distance
High - objective or supernatural
The closer to the face equal more emotion.
Tracking away means its beyond our control
Tracking from wide to close u can find a hidden secret
Cutting from wide to close = shock
Following an actor emphasizes emotion
Moving the camera to the next shot instead of cutting holds onto tension
Long stationary camera shot allows opposing forces to converge within the screen space line in Marnie with the office cleaner.
Fast cutting is impressionistic can stretch out a fast event or evoke things not seen on the screen for the audiences imagination
